Interviews

Top Spin 3 Interview

We sit down with PAM's Creative Director Francois Giuntini to talk about a new approach to tennis in videogames.

2K Sports recently played host to tennis stars Maria Sharapova and James Blake in Miami, Florida, unveiling Top Spin 3 to a crowd of star-struck journalists. While we weren't treated to her signature shrieks and grunts, we were able to get the inside scoop on what to expect in Top Spin 3 from Francois Giuntini, Creative Director of Paris' PAM development studio. Read on to learn about what makes for an entertaining tennis game, and the challenges in balancing realism against fun in a sports game.

GameSpy: What kind of impact do you feel having Maria Sharapova here and on the cover have on promoting the game?

Francois Giuntini, Creative Director, PAM Development: She's one of the most famous player... so, you know. (laughs)

GameSpy: What are the most significant changes in Top Spin 3 over the previous games in the series?

Francois Giuntini: A lot! (laughs) The most important one is definitely gameplay. We've revamped everything, and that's not just changes. We've gotten rid of all the old gameplay code and started with a blank page. So it's been a lot of work, a lot of thought, a lot of design, a lot of trials.

But I think it's for the best, because we really wanted to achieve something with this tennis game that we never succeeded with in the first one. What we never saw in any other tennis games. We want Top Spin 3 to be on the level of the great sports franchise games, like American football, European soccer, basketball. You see those games, and they're very respectful of the reality of the sports. They are easy to play, but there's a lot of depth to them as well, and we wanted to achieve that in a tennis game. That's why we rebuilt Top Spin from the ground up.

GameSpy: So previous games have just been incremental upgrades over Pong, and now you've really captured the sport?

Francois Giuntini: That's a bit simplistic, but almost. I'm also including the previous Top Spin in that assessment. At some point, it was just a matter of hitting the ball left and right, left and right, and at some point, well, if you hit it harder you win. That happens in tennis. But there's more than that in tennis. We really wanted to make sure that we tried to combine both elements of making it easy to access, easy to play, easy to send balls back and move around.

But we wanted to add more depth, where at some point you don't feel like, "that's it. I've learned it all and there's nothing else." We tried with the new system we've built in of timing and positioning, the new element of risk that you can take, et cetera, et cetera. Previously there was really no tactical and positional and strategy elements that make for a really rich game experience, and we're very proud of what we've done. We think it works.